---
schema_version: "1"
id: f18334b67cbdff1c51246ecbb6b3c6e2103c7d0d922aad19fe3c5e9260a6be1b
title: Email Address Internationalization (EAI) Considerations
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/sales/264-0-0/emailadmin_eai_considerations.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_eai_considerations.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: e1e7db4a58e9545d9bb953b0511049bbcc3de6956e413251a066028563655e3b
description: Understand the impact of Email Address Internationalization (EAI) on email address length and the number of allowed recipients per email. Review support limitations, best practices, and the changes to the character encoding returned through the API for email fields.
products:
  - Sales Cloud
  - Cross Cloud
  - Service Cloud Voice
release: "264"
---
# Email Address Internationalization (EAI) Considerations

Understand the impact of Email Address Internationalization (EAI) on email address length and the number of allowed recipients per email. Review support limitations, best practices, and the changes to the character encoding returned through the API for email fields.

### Required Editions

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small edition"><colgroup><col></colgroup><tbody><tr class=""><td class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;">Available in: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience</td></tr><tr class=""><td class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;">Available in: <strong>All</strong> editions</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Support Limitations

EAI email addresses aren’t supported for Marketing Cloud, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Einstein Activity Capture, or Salesforce Inbox. Our Account Engagement email address validation vendor currently supports only ASCII characters. So you can’t add, update, or sync a prospect with non-Latin-based characters in their email address in Account Engagement. If emails with EAI recipients are included in the Account Engagement send pipeline, those recipients are dropped from the communication.

## Only Use ASCII Email Addresses in the Email From Field

If a receiving Email Service Provider (ESP) or Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) doesn’t support internationalized email, emails sent from an EAI email address bounce. And the emails bounce even if all the recipients are American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) email addresses. Until all ESPs and MTAs support EAI, we recommend that you use only ASCII email addresses for your “from” addresses when sending email from Salesforce. The “from" email address is typically populated from the user account’s email field or an organization-wide email address.

## Email Address Length and Storage

Non-Latin-based characters are often wider, requiring extra field space and storage. We support non-Latin-based characters in email addresses up to the current 80-character maximum.

![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sales-sales_productivity-264-0-0-production-enus/b2f6c36a-fa61-4a3c-9752-032ce1818a69/images/icon_note.png)

Note Encrypting email can reduce the number of characters allowed per email address by as much as a third.

## Number of Recipients Per Email

​​​​​​​An EAI email address takes three times more storage on average than an ASCII email address. We addressed the storage per email address, but the TO, CC, and BCC fields on an individual email each still allow up to 4,000 bytes. So using EAI email addresses can reduce the maximum number of recipients per email by as much as a factor of three.

## Mixed Address Handling

To maximize the delivery rate for your emails, Salesforce provides options on how to handle emails containing ASCII and EAI email recipient addresses. The default option is to split the email into two emails. We recommend this option because it gives the message the best chance of delivery.

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small ">
        <colgroup>
          <col style="width:20%">
          <col style="width:80%">
        </colgroup>
        <thead class="slds-text-title_caps ">
          <tr class="">
            <th scope="col" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" id="d134541e109">OPTION</th>
            <th scope="col" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" id="d134541e112">BEHAVIOR</th>
          </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
          <tr class="">
            <td data-label="OPTION" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d134541e109 ">Split</td>

            <td data-label="BEHAVIOR" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d134541e112 ">
              <ul>
                <li>Delivery to the ASCII email address recipients succeeds.</li>

                <li>International emails are delivered successfully as long as the recipient’s ESP
                  and MTA supports EAI.</li>

                <li>For recipients with an ASCII email address, the “Reply All” action only sends
                  a response to recipients with ASCII email addresses.</li>

                <li>For recipients with an EAI email address, the “Reply All” action sends a
                  response to all email recipients. If any receiving mail service doesn’t support
                  EAI, the email bounces.</li>

                <li>If only EAI addresses exist in the TO field, that field can be blank in the
                  split messages. For example, you send an email with only EAI addresses in the TO
                  field and ASCII and EAI addresses in the CC field. When this message is split,
                  the TO field in the split email with only ASCII addresses is blank. Although a
                  blank TO recipient list can look odd in your email client, email standards allow
                  it.</li>

              </ul>
              <p style="margin-bottom:0;">If you choose to send email from Salesforce using an EAI email address,
                selecting this option has no effect. A single email is sent because of the EAI
                email address in the from field.</p>
            </td>

          </tr>
          <tr class="">
            <td data-label="OPTION" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d134541e109 ">Allow</td>

            <td data-label="BEHAVIOR" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d134541e112 ">
              <ul>
                <li>Delivery is only successful to recipients whose ESPs and MTAs support
                  internationalized emails.</li>

                <li>The “Reply All” action sends a response to all email recipients.</li>

              </ul>
            </td>

          </tr>
        </tbody>
      </table>

## Storage and Display Encoding

With EAI disabled, the data in fields of type email are all stored with ASCII or ASCII Compatible Encoding (ACE) encoding.

   
| INPUT | DISPLAY | STORAGE | API TYPE RETURNED |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ASCII | ASCII | ASCII | ASCII |
| ACE | ACE | ACE | ACE |
| Unicode (IDN) | ACE | ACE | ACE |
| Unicode (EAI) | Invalid email error | N/A | N/A |

When you enable EAI, the encoding of the data in email fields changes. Most notably, Unicode (IDN) formatted email addresses entered or updated after EAI is enabled are stored in Unicode format. Unicode (IDN) formatted email addresses stored in email fields before EAI is enabled retain the original encoding type (ACE).

   
| INPUT | DISPLAY | STORAGE | API TYPE RETURNED |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ASCII | ASCII | ASCII | ASCII |
| ACE | ACE | ACE | ACE |
| Unicode (IDN), entered before EAI is enabled | ACE | ACE | ACE |
| Unicode (IDN), entered or edited after EAI is enabled | Unicode | Unicode | Unicode |
| Unicode (IDN with combining characters) | ACE | ACE | ACE |
| Unicode (EAI) | Unicode | Unicode | Unicode |
| Unicode (EAI with combining characters) | Unicode@ACE | Unicode@ACE | Unicode@ACE |

#### See Also

- [Prepare for Email Address Internationalization (EAI)](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_eai_prepare.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Take these steps before activating Email Address Internationalization (EAI). Make sure that UTF-8 support exists throughout the email’s path, update your integrations to support Unicode characters, and adopt the latest API version. We also recommend that custom fields storing email addresses are of the Email field type.")
- [Organization-Wide Email Addresses](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.orgwide_email.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "To enable users to send emails on behalf of a team or department, instead of using their individual email addresses, set up an organization-wide email address. Specify which user profiles or permission sets can use each address, and select one organization-wide address as your no-reply email address. With the required permissions, both users and system-generated emails can use an organization-wide address to send email from Salesforce.")